


Wake

by minchout



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 12:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1982391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minchout/pseuds/minchout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gadreel has had Sam for four years, and Dean, lost in guilt and obsessed with finding a way to get his brother back, has isolated himself in a cabin in the Missouri Ozarks with nothing but the woods, a stray dog, some chickens, and all the books the Men of Letters had to offer to keep him company. Then Sam shows up one day without his passenger, and Dean learns quickly that it doesn't matter that Sam is with him again - there is still a lot of work to be done before they can find their way back to each other.</p><p>Written for the spn_j2_bigbang! Thank you to the lovely riyku, fufaraw, and killabeez for taking the time to beta this fic. Any remaining mistakes are my own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake

There’s something ominous in this day. The sky is half bright with fading sun and muddled with clouds, low and grey like smoke from a great fire. The dog is restless. Pacing back and forth, its nails click clacking against the grainy wood floor. It scratches at the door to be let outside, but when Dean opens it, the dog stays put and stares at him, its eyes baleful. When he was younger, Dean had not been the type to feel nervous at an impending storm and the watchful eyes of a dog, but these years of solitude have not been kind to him. He sees signs in everything now, paranoid as an old stoner. 

He steps out into his yard, and the dog barks a warning but follows, its tail hung low between its legs. Dean has his pearl-gripped colt in a shoulder holster, a sawed-off with rock salt rounds clutched in his hand, a flask of holy water in his hip pocket. He takes them everywhere. He works his small garden with the sawed-off in reach. He sleeps with the colt and Ruby’s old demon killer beneath his pillow. When he sleeps. 

It’s no life. Dean knows that. He can’t bring himself to hunt, though. More than that, he doesn’t care enough to. He’s lost…well, he’s just lost. He’s done. He thinks every day of putting a bullet in his head, but he can’t do it while Sam’s body is still out there somewhere. The need to protect his brother overrides anything else. Dean doesn’t even question it. He isn’t sure if Sam is still alive or if Gadreel is riding a meat suit. Or worse. Maybe the angel has burned through everything that makes Sam _Sam_. He doesn’t need to know. As long as Sam’s body is topside, Dean will be here. 

The dog follows behind, snuffling loudly as Dean walks the perimeter of the small cabin. Dean finds nothing suspicious. His salt lines are intact. His wards glow with power. At the North corner of the lot, he cuts into his arm and uses his blood to strengthen a sigil that looks faded. His forearms are riddled with scars from these shallow gashes, one after another like tally marks.. He doesn’t take care of the wounds like he should, and he knows what Sam would say about that if he were here. It isn’t as if he’s trying to hurt himself, though. He just forgets. There are other things to care for—the cabin’s protection, his meager garden, the dog. In a way, he’s keeping these things up for Sam, in case he ever gets Sam back. But he knows what Sam would say about that, too. 

When Dean is finished, he picks up a long, heavy stick and lobs it into the distance, taking some satisfaction in how far it travels, in watching it turn end over end into the grey sky. The dog takes off after it with a gleeful yelp, but it runs right past where the stick has landed and makes its way into the blind of woods instead. It isn’t unusual for the dog to do that. It has a habit of disappearing for a day then bringing Dean dead rabbits or possums. Dean doesn’t know if the carcasses are meant as presents or if the dog just thinks Dean is too weak to hunt down his own food. Dean usually skins and cooks whatever the dog brings and feeds it to him. He figures the thing did the work, it might as well have the spoils of the hunt. 

Today, though, the dog’s disappearance has Dean on edge. He watches the tree line. After a few moments, he whistles, loud and sharp. The dog eventually comes running and Dean squats to pet the thing. Goosebumps have broken out all over his body. The air feels electric. When the dog barrels into Dean’s arms, it has something hanging from its muzzle. It’s a large scrap of fabric, and when Dean tries to take it, the dog tugs, growling like it’s a game. 

Dean says, “Drop it,” his voice sharp, and the dog does as it’s told, looking at Dean as if betrayed. 

The fabric in Dean’s hand is a faded plaid. There’s a small spot of what Dean’s sure is blood. Dean looks out at the tree line again. Before common sense can take over and make him cautious, he begins the trek toward the woods, his sawed-off held in front of him, ready. The dog barks and bounds past him, though it pauses occasionally as if waiting for Dean to follow. Dean follows. 

Not far past the tree line, it becomes difficult to see; the grove of trees is too dense to let much light in on the best of days. On a day like this, Dean feels as if he’s walked straight through a barrier from day into night. It reminds him of purgatory. The sawed-off in his hand could be the roughly-fashioned bone blade he’d carried there. He can taste the blood and ash, can sense Benny at his flank and Cas distant and troubled a few paces away. It gives him the guts he needs to walk on. 

The dog bounds off, distracted by something in the leaves, but it’s no matter. Dean doesn’t need the dog to lead him further into the woods. Huddled against the base of a tree not ten feet from Dean, curled around it as if tucked into a bed, is a man. He’s thinner than Dean remembers, his hair filthy and overgrown, even for Sam. He’s not moving much, only the slight rise and fall of his shoulders with each breath. Dean’s knees buckle. He swallows, tries to say Sam’s name, but not much comes out. He drags himself through the leaves, crawls on his hands and knees to his brother, wild with the need to see Sam’s face, to be sure it’s him. When Dean gets his hands onto his shoulders, Sam is radiating heat, and Dean’s heart is pumping rabbit fast as he rolls Sam onto his back.

“Sammy,” Dean says. He holds his brother’s face in his hands. “Sam.”

Sam’s eyelids flutter as if he’s dreaming, but he doesn’t otherwise move.

“Gadreel?” Dean tries, cautious.

Dean is sure Gadreel wouldn’t show up here unless he was desperate. He has no use for Dean. It doesn’t matter that Gadreel knows damn well Dean won’t stick him with the angel blade while he’s wearing Sam’s body; it’s a risk the angel isn’t stupid enough to take. He hunted with Dean for months, knows Dean has tricks up his sleeve. And he’s right. Dean’s stocked up on holy oil – a lifetime supply – and he’s got a ring of the stuff all around his cabin. If this is Gadreel in Sam’s body, he won’t be leaving with Sam again.

Neither angel nor Sam responds, and Dean squats, gets a grip on his brother’s body, and pulls him into a fireman’s hold. He stands with him, stumbling. His brother is lighter than he should be, but six foot four of skin and bones is still a load and it’s been years since Dean has had to carry Sam’s weight. He grunts and hoists Sam more firmly onto his shoulders, whistles for the dog, and makes his way toward the cabin. He doesn’t think of what he might be bringing inside with him or of what might happen when Sam or Gadreel wakes, he just trudges forward, one foot in front the other. By the time he makes it to the porch, he’s staggering, and he has to put his brother down to get the door open. The dog snuffles at Sam, pressing his nose to Sam’s jawline and wagging his tail, and that comforts Dean some. The dog doesn’t tend to be too friendly with supernatural creatures. It’s the only reason Dean keeps him, or so Dean tells himself. The dog can smell a demon miles off, but it still sleeps in the bed with Dean, and Dean still feeds it scraps from his table.

Dean grabs Sam beneath the arms and drags him into the cabin. He feels bad treating his brother’s body this way, but a little bump and shuffle is the least of their problems right now. The dog begins barking excitedly the further Dean gets into the cabin, as if the addition of a new person into their little duo is as exciting as Dean coming home from a supply run. It wags its tail and bumps its nose against the arch of Sam’s bare foot, and Dean feels suddenly and completely overwhelmed. He’s found Sam barefoot and in the woods, unconscious, filthy, too skinny, his hair overlong. It’s been near four years since he’s seen his brother and all of this, everything wrong with Sam right now is Dean’s fault. 

Dean holds it together long enough to lay Sam onto the floor, then he trips backwards, loses his footing and falls onto his ass. He drags his hand across his face, stares at his brother and tries to steady his breathing, match it to the slow, steady rise of Sam’s chest. In some ways, Dean’s been spending his whole life doing just this, watching over Sam, trying to find rhythm with him so that they could inhabit the same space as effortlessly as any two people are able. This is no different than that. Dean lost his brother for a time, but Sam’s here now, and Dean can watch over him again. No matter how bad off Sam is, and no matter if it’s Dean’s fault, Dean will take care of him. 

***

Sam doesn’t wake for almost a week. Dean puts him in his bed and at night he sleeps spread out and restless on the floor on a couple of musty blankets. During the day, he tries to go about business as usual. He checks the perimeter, checks his wards. He gives his baby a bath and when the dog won’t stop yapping, chasing and biting at the stream of water from the garden hose, Dean washes it, too. He makes lists of what he needs from town on his monthly supply run then he loses the lists and makes more. He thinks about driving a couple towns over and hustling, remembers he doesn’t have the heart to work a pool table without Sam, then worries about money and works in his garden to make himself feel better about not doing anything to make money. The weather is warming, the days following Sam’s return are suddenly and relentlessly sun soaked, and his garden is doing well. It’s taken Dean three years to get it going, and now that it’s in its fourth year, Dean thinks he might actually have surplus. He’s been thinking of taking the extras into the closest farmer’s market, about an hour away in the nearest town.  
It had seemed like a good plan when he’d thought it up, but now, as he kneels in the dirt, the sun hot on his bare neck, four days after he found Sam and three days after he became fed up with doing nothing but waiting for Sam to wake, he thinks about Sam and how much the kid always ate, and how maybe he’ll have help eating all of this shit anyway. About how maybe he’ll have company at the dinner table for a change. Dean doesn’t remember the last time he sat across from another human being while he ate. He doesn’t even have a TV to sit in front of to fake it. He thinks about this, and he sits back on his heels and laughs, the sound unnatural to his own ears, bitter and crazy. He’s heard something similar, years ago out of Frank, before the Leviathan got him. Rough and angry. Forced amusement. The sound of Dean’s laugh reminds him just how long he’s been alone. He hopes now, though he doesn’t deserve it, that this is the end of that.

He worries constantly about Sam during that week, about whether he’ll wake, about what he’s gone through, about whether he’ll even stick around once he’s on his feet given what Dean did to him. On the second day, when it becomes clear that Sam is out for the long haul, Dean goes into town to get supplies to set up an IV to keep him hydrated. It kills him to do it, to leave Sam’s side so soon. He takes precautions, lays down salt lines and wards, old Enochian symbols and anything else he can think of to keep his brother safe. At the last minute, he kneels beside the bed, turns his brother’s hands palm up, and draws anti-possession symbols, one for demons on one hand, one for angels on the other, tracing over that old, white hooked scar in the center of Sam’s palm. When he’s finished, he sits like that for a minute, curled over his brother, loosely clasping one wrist. When he can, he stands, pats Sammy on the chest, then walks out the door. 

It’s almost fun. Feels like old days when he steals scrubs from someone’s locker in the ER and works his way into the supply closet with a mixture of stealth and charm. Feels like hunting again. He doesn’t deserve to feel good about it though, and that thought sours his stomach as he drives back out into the nowhere to his cabin. He lets his baby, who sees too little action lately, eat up the road and he blares Metallica. He thinks, fleetingly, of driving on. What he’s done is too big, and the guilt of it is filling every piece of him. It’s blood in his veins. It’s his lungs and their tightly gasping drawn breaths too much like panic. It’s the pain in his gut. He doesn’t regret doing what he had to do to keep Sam alive, but he knows a lack of regret does not put him in the right. When he’d sold his soul to the crossroads demon for Sam, he’d believed he was doing the _Right_ thing. The righteous thing.  
He doesn’t drive on, though. He can’t let his brother wake up alone any more than he could let Sam follow his reaper. But when he gets back to the cabin, there’s relief when he’s greeted only by the dog. Sam is still unconscious, his hands still palm up, fingers curled slightly, and Dean doesn’t have to face what he’s put his brother through quite yet.

***

The night before Sam comes to, Dean breaks down. He’s eating a quick dinner of canned chili. He’d brought lettuce and tomato and cucumber in from his garden but couldn’t be bothered to cut any of it for the salad he’d planned. His chili is barely warm, and as he eats it and thinks of the possibility of Sam sitting across from him, be begins to cry. He doesn’t acknowledge it at first. He sniffs and sets his jaw and chews at his dinner until it begins to taste like salt and the tears are dripping off his chin and onto the table. He sits back, pushes away, the chair legs screaming as they’re dragged across the linoleum. He tries to stand, but he collapses back onto the chair. He covers his face with one hand and, noiselessly, with no one there to see, lets himself cry. After, when his head feels stuffed full of cotton and he is emotionless, he gets out of the chair and walks to his bedroom. 

Sam hasn’t moved these seven days, and that, more than anything, is getting to Dean. Even when Death had given Sam his soul, and even when Sam’s wall had crumbled, Sam had moved in his sleep. He’d mumbled. His face would pinch as if his dreams were painful, and they probably had been. But now, there’s nothing, there’s just Sam, there’s just Dean’s bed, and Sam’s big scarecrow hands palm upward, symbols of protection in stark black marker on the pale, calloused skin. 

Dean crawls onto the bed with his brother. He forces Sam to give him space, pushing and shuffling Sam’s big, heavy body as gently as he can. It’s not a big bed, and it’s not an easy fit, but Dean makes it work. He ends up stretched out on his side against Sam, burrowed beneath Sam’s arm, and rested his head on Sam’s chest. He thinks about all the times they’ve done this before, countless times, remembers the feel of Sam’s come on the inside of his thighs, of Sam walking his fingers up Dean’s spine, an unconscious gesture that always lulled Dean into sleep. . Sam still puts off heat like a car engine after a country drive and Dean lets himself, for just a minute, imagine that he hasn’t been alone for the last four years, that he hadn’t been so desperate to save Sam that he’d let an angel take his body. That Kevin hadn’t died and Gadreel hadn’t hijacked Sam’s body and run off to follow Metatron.”

“You gotta wake up, man,” Dean says. “You gotta give me something here. You can hate me, leave me here to rot. You can stab me in the fucking heart. I don’t care. But you gotta wake up, Sammy.”

The dog gives an unhappy grumble from the floor followed by a sleepy bark. Dean whistles and it jumps onto the bed, scratches at the covers and shuffles in around Sam’s feet until it’s between Sam’s legs and curled up tight with its muzzle resting on Sam’s ankle. Dean has done every test he could think of on Sam since he’d appeared, and Sam seems to be just Sam.. Gadreel could be hurting from the war, and Dean wouldn’t put it past him to make some last-ditch effort, fool him into thinking Sam’s back long enough to regain some strength then take off again. But it’s the dog’s ease with Sam’s unconscious form that keeps Dean from panicking about his brother still having a passenger.

“They say the war’s not going well for Metatron,” Dean says. “I may not hunt anymore, but I listen. Can’t quit completely. Guess it’s in the blood.” He huffs a laugh. “Haven’t seen Cas in almost three years, but he sends word sometimes. He won’t try to send one of his fucking ‘flock’ again, though. Not after I ran the one off with angel buckshot. Thought you’d be proud of me for that one, little brother. I melted one of those angel blades down. Keep a gun loaded by the front door. Sometimes I feel like I’m turning into Frank. Old, broke down, and paranoid. You wouldn’t do this. You wouldn’t’ve let yourself get so fucked up. Maybe you had the right idea when I was in purgatory.” Dean fists his hand in the clean, soft t-shirt he’d put on Sam just that morning. “I couldn’t let you die. I just couldn’t.”

Dean falls silent. He presses his nose to his brother’s chest. It’s silly, but the smell of Sam comforts him. It reminds him of being little boys together, of when Sam was still little enough to want to curl up next to Dean on whatever soft surface was handy in whatever dump their dad had found for them, and they would watch endless movies or cartoons while they waited out the hours until their dad’s return. Sam smelled a little of sweat then, a little of dust and dirt and spaghetti-os, and though Sam now just smells of clean skin and laundry detergent (and something deeper and a little wrong, as if whatever sickness Gadreel might have left behind is still holding on), it’s still that basic Sam scent, and it makes Dean nostalgic. It reminds him of family and love and home. It reminds him of afternoons spent tangled together in wrecked bed sheets, the sun barely filtering in through the filthy hotel blinds, Sam’s toes pressed to Dean’s shin, Dean’s knee between Sam’s legs. Sam has this thing for tracing the lines of Dean’s face when they’re spent and laying together in that way. He’ll drag his fingers down the bridge of Dean’s nose, over the bow of his lips, around the shell of his ear. 

It takes hours, but Dean eventually falls asleep like that, Sam’s fingers phantoms ghosting across his skin. 

***

Dean wakes to the sound of the dog barking. The noise is sharp and upset. Dean is on his back, and he lies still, opens his eyes. There’s a blade pressed to his throat. Sam is straddling him, heavy and immobile, and his face is twisted into a snarl. Sam’s never been like Dean in that regard, could never make his face blank to hide what he was feeling. Right now he’s furious, and he wants Dean to know it. 

“Sam,” Dean says, low and soothing, and even just that, just the gentle roll of his throat from that one word, brings his skin too close to the blade. It draws blood, but Dean doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even hiss. Sam doesn’t back away. 

“How did I get here?” Sam says.

“Don’t know. I found you in the woods about a week ago.”

“Bullshit,” Sam says.

“Wanna cool it with the blade, Sammy? I don’t need a shave.”

Sam snorts, and there’s no smile in the sound. It’s not a laugh. It’s the angry noise of a bull that knows it’s got the rider in the line of its horns. Sam digs his knees into Dean’s side and leans further over him, the blade biting into Dean’s neck. Dean flattens himself as much as possible into the mattress, keeps his eyes firmly on Sam’s face as Sam’s eyes flick back and forth, searching for something. Sam’s mouth pinches into a thin, unhappy line. 

Finally, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” he says. 

“You should,” Dean says. 

Sam does laugh then, harshly, and the sound breaks into a sob. He lifts the knife, and Dean thinks he’s in the clear, but then Sam flips it in his grip and brings it down, buries it to the hilt in Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean’s so shocked by the pain that he can’t even yell. He just gasps a strained, harsh breath, all the tendons in his neck cording from the strain of trying not to scream. He bucks his hips and Sam rolls off of him easily as Dean curls in on himself. Blood soaks into his shirt and pain trips down his arm, every nerve ending lit up and vying for attention. He wraps his left hand around the handle of the blade. 

“Leave it,” Sam says. “I’ll let you bleed out if you pull it out before I say you can.”

Dean laughs then groans. “Thought you wanted me dead.”

“You’d deserve it.” 

Dean is aware the dog is barking. At some point, Sam must have pushed it out of the bedroom and shut the door. 

“Sammy,” Dean says.

“Shut up.”

Sam begins moving around the room. He looks in the small chest of drawers Dean keeps. It’s in Dean’s line of sight, and he watches his brother, clenches his teeth through the pain. In the bottom drawer, there’s a small stash of weapons, and Sam pulls out a six shooter and palms it while he rifles through the rest with his free hand. 

“You got any holy oil?” he says. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, the word more of a grunt than anything. “Don’t keep it in there, though.” 

“Go get it,” Sam says. He’s changing out of his sweatpants and into a pair of his own jeans. He hadn’t seemed even mildly surprised to find a drawer of his own clothes, and Dean supposes that’s right. Sam knows him better than anyone. Knows Dean wouldn’t have thrown out his things. 

Dean struggles to sit up, and Sam doesn’t offer to help. He just goes about pulling on a shoulder harness and tucking the gun into it before putting flasks of holy water into his back pockets and strapping an angel blade to his forearm. 

“Fuck,” Dean groans, the word long, drawn out. When he’s finally sitting up, he stays where he is. He’s panting, a cold sweat making his skin clammy. His arm is numb now, feels dead, but his shoulder is still all heat and agony. 

“Sam,” Dean tries.

“Get me the holy oil.” Sam looks at him, his face a mix of fury and real, unmasked fear. “As much as you have.”

“I have an entire shelf full. At least fifty casks. You want me to carry all that in here with eight inches of metal buried in my shoulder? Sammy, c’mon man. I gotta get it out.” He’s sitting on the edge of the bed hunched over, his left hand still wrapped around the handle of the blade. 

Sam looks uncertain. He’s on edge still, every muscle tensed, ready to fight. But he pushes his hand back through his hair, and his mouth curves into a frown, his forehead wrinkling with it. 

“You’re Dean, aren’t you?” he says finally, and it sounds so fucking uncertain that Dean actually physically reacts to the sound, shuddering in a way that has little to do with the knife.

“It’s me, man,” Dean says. 

“It isn’t usually.” Sam shifts, restless, and the floorboards creak.

“You want me to do the silver? The salt?”

“That won’t prove anything.” 

Sam crosses the room, rough as he knocks Dean’s hand from the knife’s handle, braces Dean’s left shoulder and pulls the knife free. Dean does shout then, long and loud, which sets the dog off barking in the next room, and Sam pulls his hand away from Dean and lets him crumple backwards onto the bed. 

“Where’s the shelf?” 

“What?” Dean says.

“With the holy oil.”

“Store room, just down the hall.” 

Sam turns and throws the door open, leaves before Dean can get another word in. Dean forces himself to his feet and into his bathroom where he sloppily folds a towel with one hand then presses it to the wound in his shoulder. He grunts and doubles over. It takes him a minute to catch his breath, and he stands in the bathroom listening to the sound of Sam stomping back and forth, back and forth down the hallway. The dog’s nails are scurrying taps against the hardwood floor, obviously following Sam closely. 

When Dean can, when the pain recedes to a bearable throb, he stumbles from the bathroom and makes his way out into the main room of the cabin. Sam isn’t there and neither is the dog, but the front door is thrown open. Everything is happening too quickly, and Dean, anxious and hurting, feels like he can’t keep up. He wants to grab Sam, hold him still and make sure he’s okay. He wants to sit Sam down and keep him where he puts him, tie him down if he has to until they can both just catch their fucking breath. But Dean knows his brother to well to think he has any hope of calming him down right now. 

Dean makes his way outside. He squints into the sun and has to blink and shake his head before his vision clears, but eventually he finds Sam. He’s standing perfectly still, a jar of holy oil in one hand, staring at Dean’s garden. He looks zoned out. When Dean calls his name, Sam doesn’t move. 

Dean walks closer to his brother and Sam says, “You have a vegetable garden.” 

Dean grunts an acknowledgement. He’s a little embarrassed now that Sam is awake and looking at his little patch, the neatly lined rows, the chicken wire walling in the tomatoes, the raised beds for his peppers and cucumbers and the coffee cans filled with soil for his herbs. It is unusual. Dean’s not really the gardening type and, before, he would have mocked Sam for months if he had ever suggested something like this. But fuck it. Dean can’t live on canned soup and there isn’t a take-out place within miles of his cabin. So he hunts, and he gardens, and Dean can man up and admit that.

Sam turns to look at Dean. “That’s new.”

Dean’s still embarrassed. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. Then, “So what?” 

“He would have never thought of this.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Who wouldn’t have thought of this?” 

Sam shakes his head, and his eyes go flat and cold. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “We’re gonna ring this place in holy oil and light it. Grab a couple of jars. We’ll start here and circle around, meet up behind the house.”

“The whole place is warded against angels, and I’ve already ringed it in holy oil. We don’t need to waste the oil we have left. I haven’t seen Cas in—”

“I want a fresh circle, and I want it lit. We do that or I leave,” Sam says. He shrugs. 

Dean nods, walks to where Sam has lined the jars of oil. He tries to grab a jar with his right hand so he can keep holding the compress with his left, but just curling his fingers around the handle sends a throb, shocking and bone deep, from his hand straight up his arm. He curses and drops it. He closes his eyes A few deep breaths later, the pain has receded some, so Dean drops the compress and grabs the jar with his left hand instead. He walks back to his brother. 

“You’ll need more than that.” 

Dean just rolls his eyes and starts pouring. He doesn’t wait for Sam, but when he begins, Sam scrambles and starts his own line of holy oil in the same place. They do what Sam wants. Dean has to stop often to get more holy oil, and by the time he and Sam meet up behind the cabin, he’s weak, lightheaded and dizzy from the blood loss. The front of his shirt is soaked through with it, and the blood has dripped down his arm to dry tacky on his hand and fingers. 

He throws the final empty cask out into the yard, and he lets himself fall into the grass. It jars his shoulder, and the pain of it wakes him up, sets his heart pumping and makes his breath short. He presses his hand to the wound and curses. 

“Are you happy now?” he says to his brother. The dog has been following Dean around the yard, and now he noses at the hand Dean has resting against his shoulder. He whines, trying to get Dean to move it, and when he flicks his tongue out and tastes blood, he whines again and tries to climb directly into Dean’s lap. 

Sam’s watching him. He’s frowning again, but Dean could give a shit right now. He wants a Vicodin and a bottle of whiskey. He needs to clean and stitch the wound. He’d be worried about it, but he’s had worse, and if Sam had punctured anything life threatening, Dean would’ve known it the second the knife went in.. 

Sam’s staring is unnerving him, though, and he’s pissed he can’t just feel pitiful in peace.“What?” Dean says, his voice a growl. 

“You have a dog,” Sam says, flat. 

“You just noticed?”

Sam shrugs. He pulls a pack of matches from his pocket, lights one, and tosses it at the ring of oil. It lights quick, the flames perfect and heatless, like a mirage. If he were to pass his hands through the wall of them, he wouldn’t feel a thing, as if they aren’t even there. Sam looks suddenly relaxed. His shoulders slump, and he takes a deep breath. He pockets the matches and pushes his hands back through his hair. 

“Need a haircut,” he says absently. 

“Sam,” Dean says. He tries to stand, but he can’t get his one good arm beneath him. Before he knows what’s happening, though, Sam bends down and grabs Dean by both shoulders and pulls him to his feet. “Fuck,” Dean moans. “Fuck, Sam. You stabbed me in the shoulder.”

Sam’s glare is cold. “You let an angel possess me. You got off easy.”

Dean stills. His heart is pounding, and between the sudden upsurge of guilt, the blood loss and the pain, he thinks he might actually pass out. He’d been hoping, some stupid part of his brain had thought that maybe, _maybe_ Sam might not know how Gadreel had come to possess him. But of course he knew. Sam was too smart to miss that, and there was no telling what Gadreel himself had said to Sam after he took his body for a joyride all those years ago. 

Dean nods. He swallows, and when he tries to speak, his voice is too rough. He has to stop and clear his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I know—”

“You don’t know a goddamned thing, Dean,” Sam says. 

He turns from Dean and stares out at the tree line, much closer to the cabin back here than it is out front. They’re surrounded by trees. Just endless forest followed by nothing. Sam seems to get lost in it for a moment, but then he shakes his head, turns, and walks around to the front of the cabin without another word. Dean takes a breath, and after a moment follows behind him.

***

Sam’s in the kitchen. He’s gripping the lip of the countertop—yellow, fading, chipped formica that Dean had thought about replacing—and his shoulders are hunched. He’s staring into the sink, but then again, he doesn’t really seem to be staring at anything at all. He’s just standing. Statue still. Dean fidgets in the doorway behind him, and the stretch of the small kitchen between them might as well be the length of the highway through the Badlands. He thinks of the bottle of whiskey that’s in the cabinet above Sam. He’s holding a beat up throw pillow against his shoulder as a compress since the first one was soaked through. The bleeding has slowed some, he thinks, but he also thinks there’s been real damage done. He hasn’t been able to feel his fingers in over an hour. Sam also hasn’t said a word in all that time, and Dean doesn’t know which he should fix first. His arm is more pressing, and simpler, but the idea of taking care of himself before he takes care of Sam has just never sit well with him. He feels itchy with it, with the wanting to do something to make this right, to make sure his brother is at least okay even if he’s never planning to forgive Dean.

So Dean stands in the kitchen, watching his brother looking at nothing. Twice now Dean has called Sam’s name, and both times Sam has said nothing. It doesn’t even seem like Sam has heard him. Dean sighs and gives it up—just for now, not for good—and stumbles backwards into the living room. The sun is setting—it’s later than he thought—and he picks his way through the growing dark carefully as he can. He’s unsteady on his feet, and it’s that strange time of day when the shadows are growing and nothing seems as it actually is and a man’s eyes can play tricks on him. The sense of oddness is made more present by the holy fire burning in a ring around the cabin, dancing blue flames framed by the windows. 

When he reaches his bathroom, he leans against the sink and gives himself a minute to get his shit together. His reflection in the mirror is too pale, bruises smudged beneath his eyes and freckles dark, and his mind plays tricks on him. The freckles are speckles of blood, then they’re not, then they are, and Dean has to look away from himself, but it’s no good because his hand on the sink is smeared with blood, too. 

He drops to his knees and digs through the cabinet beneath the sink for the first aid kit. He hasn’t needed it for a while, but he has thread for stitches, he has needles and antiseptic. He doesn’t have painkillers though (he’d blown through those in the month after he’d first settled here, when it had become real to him just how hopeless finding Gadreel and getting his brother back really was), and he thinks again of the whiskey in the cabinet and how he’d have to go through Sam to get it. 

Dean pulls himself up until he’s sitting on the closed toilet lid. He tosses the first aid kit in the sink, then takes his shirt off slow. When he tries to lift his right arm to remove the shirt, the pain is sudden and sickening, and he clenches his teeth and groan-screams into his throat, unwilling to let the noise loose. He doesn’t want Sam to hear. When he’s able, he decides he’s not getting the shirt off that way, and he digs a pair of scissors from the kit, cuts the shirt away from the wound and peels it the rest of the way off. 

He cleans the wound carefully, wiping the blood away and irrigating it with the antiseptic wash. It hurts like a bitch but looks okay. It’s clean , the skin not torn too badly. It could be worse. He doesn’t have to dig a bullet out this time. The stitching is a problem, though. His hands are shaking like an old drunk’s, and he’s three uneven, painful stitches in when Sam’s bulk fills the bathroom doorway. Dean isn’t expecting him, and he jumps, tugging at the wound. 

“Fuck,” he says, the sound of his voice is so pitiful it’s embarrassing. 

Sam sighs, long and put upon in a way that’s so freaking familiar it makes Dean’s chest go tight and painful, and for an alarming few seconds he’s not sure if he’s going to be able to keep himself from crying. He hasn’t seen his brother in four years, and everything about Sam is so familiar to Dean—his frowning, unhappy face, his shadow darkening the doorway, his shoulders, tense and hunched. His hands are strong and sure as he goes to his knees in front of Dean and takes the needle and thread from him to finish the job. Though Dean had never forgotten these details that make up his brother, he’d managed to live with a Sam-shaped hole in his life for so long now that he’d fooled himself into believing he was dealing. Sam’s presence now, real and warm and angry, makes Dean feel grateful he’s still alive for the first time since Purgatory. 

All the same, Sam is kneeling in front of Dean, and when he moves to begin stitching, Dean pulls away. He’s pissed that Sam knifed him and a little wary of what Sam will do next.

“You’re not gonna stab me again, are you?” he says. 

Sam just shrugs, but when Dean goes to get up, Sam muscles him back onto the toilet. 

“Let me do it,” Sam says. “You’ll just fuck it up and it’ll get infected and that will be one more fucking thing I have to deal with.”

Dean starts to say something, but Sam sticks him with the needle and pulls the first stitch through the skin, so he shuts up and lets Sam work. After a few stitches, Dean lets himself settle. He’s staring at his brother. He can’t help it. His eyes find the soft hair at Sam’s temple that always curls a bit, the unruly tuck of it behind his ear. He follows the slope of Sam’s nose until he’s looking at Sam’s mouth, which is set in concentration. Sam’s eyes are trained on Dean’s chest, and when his tongue sneaks out to lick the corner of his mouth, Dean moves without thinking. He reaches out with his left hand and takes the end of Sam’s hair between his fingers. Sam twitches, and he looks up at Dean, and he isn’t happy, but he doesn’t pull away either. He just goes back to his work and Dean is mesmerized by it for a moment, the steady stick, pull, tug of the stitches, the dull spreading pain, the slip of Sam’s hair between his fingers. As Sam finishes the stitches, Dean moves his hand to rest it against Sam’s neck. His thumb brushes the set line of Sam’s jaw. 

“Sammy,” Dean says.

Sam does pull away then, suddenly enough that Dean loses his balance and catches himself on the rim of the tub with his right hand. The stab of pain in his shoulder is stomach turning. Dean slips to the floor where Sam had just been kneeling and tries not to be sick.

“You need to have that looked at,” Sam says once Dean has finally calmed enough to sit back against the tub.

“It’s fine,” Dean says. 

“Dean,” Sam says. 

Dean waits for him to finish that thought, but Sam just shrugs and turns to the sink. Dean watches him from the floor as Sam carefully avoids the mirror, turns on the water, and washes his hands of Dean’s blood then wipes them dry on his jeans. He turns to Dean, standing hipshot against the sink. 

“Can you stand?” he says. 

Dean nods without thought. When Sam turns to leave without another word, Dean calls after him.

“Sam, wait,” he says. “C’mon, man, just…slow down for a minute, huh? Talk to me.”

Sam leans against the doorframe. His eyes are completely without emotion when he looks at Dean. “What do you wanna talk about?”

Dean has no fucking clue. Jesus, shouldn’t Sam know that Dean has no fucking clue? He’s terrible at this. Dean huffs out a breath. “Are you okay?” he says. 

“What do you think?” Sam says. 

“Fair enough,” Dean says. “But just start with the basics, man, okay? How are you physically? Do you need anything? Are you hungry? I mean, fuck. Whatever you want, Sam. Just tell me.”

“How long was I gone, Dean?” Sam says. His face is still impassive, but some of what he’s feeling is leaking into his voice. There’s the strain of anger and pain in his voice, as if it hurts to talk. “How long did that thing ride me?”

“Four years,” Dean says.

Sam’s mask slips then, just a bit, just enough for Dean to notice. He pales, and his lips tug down, his eyebrows pinch. “Four years,” he repeats. “And you think I need a sandwich?”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Sam,” Dean says.

“I don’t give a shit, Dean,” Sam says. 

Dean nods. “What are you gonna do?”

“You mean am I gonna leave?” Sam says.

That’s not exactly what Dean meant, but yeah, that too. Dean is more than aware that Sam is it for him. Maybe years ago he could have tricked himself into thinking he’d be okay without Sam, and he has been okay, but that was with the hope of Sam coming back If Sam leaves now, if he chooses not to be with Dean, Dean’s done.

Dean nods, swallows thickly.

Sam’s mouth ticks unhappily. “I should,” he says.

“Yeah, you should,” Dean says. 

“This is the safest place I can be right now. You’ve got this place warded to the teeth.”

“Good,” Dean says. “That’s good.”

“I’m not staying for you.”

Dean grimaces. “Right,” he says. 

“Why aren’t you in the bunker?” Sam says.

“I couldn’t. After Kevin. And after I couldn’t find you—”

“Kevin?”

Dean sets his jaw and looks up at his brother. “Gadreel,” he says.

Sam stands very still for a second, then his face twists with grief. Bone deep. He hitches a breath and turns away.

“Sammy,” Dean says.

“Don’t,” Sam says. He shakes his head. “Don’t call me that.” 

He slips out of the doorway, leaving Dean alone. Dean pulls himself to his feet, very carefully concentrates on nothing but bandaging himself up. He gets a washcloth from beneath the sink and wets it with warm water from the faucet, then he goes about gently wiping the blood from his shoulder. He watches his hand move in the mirror. Once the blood is gone, before he can stop himself, before he can even think, really, he moves, digs his fingers into the wound. He fucking deserves it. The pain is breathtaking, and it drops him to his knees, but it’s not enough. 

***

Half a bottle of whiskey and approximately three painfully waking and two blissfully sleeping hours later, Dean wakes to the sound of screaming. He’s up before the drunk or the pain can slow him down, propelled by reflexes drilled into him by years of training and lifetimes lived as a hunter. Dean finds Sam in the living room. He’s on Dean’s sofa, all the lights in the cabin are burning, and Sam is asleep, sitting straight up, hands clenched in the sofa cushions. He’s screaming, terrified.

Dean doesn’t think. He just goes to Sam. It’s more than instinct. It’s necessity.

He grabs Sam by the shoulder and shakes him, hard. He’s prepared for the punch Sam throws, but with his hurt arm, he’s not able to deflect it. He takes it on the chin with a grunt, then shoves his brother back into the couch. 

“Sam,” he shouts. “Settle down. It’s me.”

“Dean?” Sam blinks. He shakes his head like a dog shaking off water, then he focuses on Dean. He’s breathing deep and slow, like he’s about to fall back into sleep, but he’s fighting it, forcing his eyes to stay open. “Does he…I gotta get him outta me, man. I gotta.”

Dean gives Sam’s shoulder a rough squeeze. “He’s gone, Sammy. You got rid of the bastard.” 

Sam nods. He pushes Dean away, but it doesn’t seem like he’s angry. Seems more like he just wants some room, and Dean gets that. He sits on the other end of the couch and uses his left hand to move and tuck his hurt arm in against his chest. The throbbing is insistent, and now that he’s awake, he’s got a headache to match. He’s hungover and not drunk enough at all, but he can feel Sam beside him, hear his snuffling breaths and feel his shifting, and there’s comfort in that.

“It was a dream?” Sam says eventually, and Dean’s not sure whether he’s trying to reassure himself or if he’s actually asking a question.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He carefully keeps the worry from his voice. He doesn’t think Gadreel is still riding his brother, but he has enough experience to know he could be wrong, and he’s got lists of tests he’s still itching to try now that Sam is awake. 

Sam jerks and looks over at him as if he’s only really just realizing Dean’s there. He stares at Dean for a long time, just holding his gaze. His eyes are bright, and there’s a flush high on his cheeks. He’s afraid, Dean knows. Dean can read Sam’s hand despite his poker face, and there’s real fear there. He’s fully awake now, but whatever horror chased him out of sleep is still nipping at his tail. 

“Where are we?” Sam asks.

Dean cocks an eyebrow, wonders if he has to worry about amnesia now, too. “Um, we’re in my cabin—”

Sam huffs out an unamused laugh. “No, man, I know that. I mean, I don’t even know what state I’m in.”

Dean nods. “Missouri,” he says. “West Missouri. Not too far outside the Ozarks.”

Sam sinks back into the sofa with a sigh. “We haven’t been in the Ozarks since we were teenagers. Wonder if that old snake charmer’s still alive. Remember him?”

Dean cracks what feels like the first genuine smile he’s smiled in years. “Yeah. Crazy bastard. Still don’t know how dad got to be friends with him. How many times did he get bit by his own rattlers?”

“Three,” Sam says.

“Three,” Dean agrees. “Crazy fuck.” 

He looks at Sam, and Sam isn’t smiling. His mouth is crooked downward, and he’s got his hands spread, palm up on his lap, and he’s staring at the protections symbols Dean drew there. The entire time Sam was unconscious, Dean had traced and retraced them every morning, and they were just as dark as the first day. It seems to Dean as if this is the first time Sam has noticed them, but he isn’t sure. 

“Gadreel hates snakes,” Sam says. He says it quietly, testing the words out in his mouth before letting them go. “He let the serpent into the garden.”

“So I heard,” Dean says. 

Sam looks at Dean, his eyebrow raised, his curiosity getting the best of him. “You know his story?” he says. 

“I didn’t,” Dean says. “He told me his name was Ezekiel.” He shrugs, scratches at the stubble on his cheek, which is threatening to turn into a beard. He doesn’t want to talk about this and he wishes he could give Sam more. “Cas said he was a good guy,” he offers.

“You think that makes a difference?” Sam says. He rubs at one palm with the opposite thumb. It’s the scarred one, but he’s tracing the lines of the sigil and avoiding the scar. “You wouldn’t have before. Possession is possession.”

“You were dying,” Dean says. 

“So?” Sam says. His voice is flat. No anger. Not even the hint of curiosity he’d started the conversation with.

“I couldn’t let you die. And I don’t regret it. I’m sorry for how it turned out, but you’re here now. You’re still breathing.”

“Do you know what Gadreel did because you couldn’t let me die?” Sam asks. “What you allowed him to do? I’m still breathing, but thousands of angels have been slaughtered. And maybe you don’t give a shit about angels, but their vessels died, too.” 

Dean knows. He also knows he should care. And he does care, on some level. There’s a part of him that feels the weight of all their deaths, but Dean’s lived with guilt so long it barely even registers. It’s become such a weight on his soul, a piece of him, like he’s still dragging around the chains from the rack the way he had in Hell. And the things he’s willing to do for Sam have never been rational, the need to protect Sam has always been stronger than the weight of that guilt. He’s never chosen the greater good over his brother, and it might be fucked up, but it is what it is. 

He’s thirty-nine now; in most ways, he isn’t the same person he was when his dad was alive: he doesn’t play darts in a roadhouse for fun, he doesn’t bring pretty, slim-waisted waitresses home for a fuck, he doesn’t really mean it when he smiles and hasn’t for a long time. He knows now that he does more harm than good as a hunter, he knows that fate will fuck you sideways no matter how much you try to deny it. He’s changed. He’s harder. When he goes into town, people give him room. It wasn’t like that when he was young. People were drawn to him then. He was charming. He wasn’t so damn tired all the time, of life, of the fight. But with all that, the one thing that has never changed is the overwhelming need to keep Sam safe. To watch out for Sam. At any cost. And he doesn’t understand how that can surprise Sam after all these years. 

Sam is looking at Dean as if he’s waiting for Dean to say something. To fight him on the point, to justify his actions. But the only justification Dean will ever have is alive and sitting next to him, too skinny and still staring at the possession-proofing etched into his palms, and that’s the kind of explanation that will never fly with his brother.  
Dean stands and walks over to the fireplace. There’s a basket on top where he keeps odds and ends, and he digs around in it until he finds a half-squashed pack of Marlboros. He taps one out and puts it in his mouth, aware of Sam’s eyes on him the entire time. He uses the stick lighter usually meant for lighting kindling, and the flame against the tip of that cigarette and the first burning hit of smoke filling his lungs is relief of the worst kind. It won’t last more than a few seconds, but he needs something right now and he won’t leave the room to go for the whiskey. Sam is talking now and he doesn’t want to risk it. 

“When did that start again?” Sam asks. He sounds pissy about it, nagging and familiar, and it makes Dean laugh.

Dean shrugs as he coughs the smoke out of his lungs. It hurts, and his eyes are watering, but it will get easier. People say it’s like riding a bike, right? Well, Dean never did get around to learning how to ride a bike – too busy learning to shoot – but starting to smoke again seemed like a good chance to use that phrase. Learning to live with Sam being pissed at him all the time? Well, that’s like riding a bike, too.

“Smoked for the first year or so after I started squatting in this shit hole. Picked up a lot of other nasty habits, too.” He rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb, then takes another drag. “But then I thought you wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t like me smoking, drinking, taking too many pain pills…so I stopped.”

“And now?”

“You’re looking at it, brother. I garden. I do repairs on the cabin. After I got myself sober, I went back to the bunker and brought as much of the library as I could back here, so I research.”

“Research what?”

“How to force an angel out of its host.”

Sam nods. He looks down at his hands again. “These are new. They’re protection sigils? I’ve never seen them.”

“Protection and anti-possession. They’re a Men of Letters special with a bit of Key of Solomon thrown in for the demon sigil.”

“The other? It’s for angels?”

“Remember the Enochian Cas carved into our ribs?” Dean touches his side. He wants to go to Sam, to be close to him while they talk, but he’s wary of how Sam will react. “The Men of Letters had a little info on hiding from angels. That sigil on your hand, even if you said yes, an angel still wouldn’t be able to ride you. Then I used some of Cas’s artwork and found a way to weave it in so it would help you stay hidden, too. It should work.”

“You don’t know?” Sam looks genuinely scared at that. Dean knows Sam’s gone around that cabin, looked at every bit of protection Dean’s built into the place, that he’s carved into the walls, laid into the floor. And the holy fire is still burning. Sam should feel safe. If Dean can give him nothing else, he wants him to feel safe.

“It’ll work, Sam,” Dean says. He stubs the cigarette out on the brick of the fireplace, then he tosses it into the remains of his last fire. He lifts his shirt to show his brother. He’s got the same sigil tattooed on the skin above his ribs on the right side, and the demon sigil on the left side. He’s got an Enochian warding spell written down the line of his sternum and the Latin equivalent tracing curve of his back along his spine. 

When the war had begun in earnest, Gadreel wearing Sam’s face doing Metatron’s dirty work and Cas leading a bunch of sheep straight to the slaughter, angels and demons both had begun popping out of the woodwork. He was too fucked up at first to do much about it, and he’d had more than one close call. But then he got sober and he got smart.

Sam grimaces. He stands and walks to Dean and bullys him backwards until the mantel is pressing uncomfortably into his shoulder blades, then Sam’s big hands are there, rucking Dean’s shirt further upward. Dean flinches when his shoulder protests painfully, but he doesn’t try to get away. Sam’s hands are on his torso, holding him as a lover would, as if he were about to lay Dean down onto a bed, but his thumbs are tracing the lines of the sigils, and his face is serious. This isn’t about touch, this is about what Dean’s done to his body and Sam’s need to see the sigils for himself and know that they’ll work. Dean knows Sam won’t take his word for it. He’ll want to do the research himself. 

And as if he read Dean’s thoughts – “I want to see what books you have,” Sam says. 

“Of course.”

“Fuck, Dean,” Sam says. “This must have taken hours.”

“Try days,” Dean says. 

“You were hiding from Gadreel?”

“Gadreel, Crowley, Abbadon, Cas,” Dean says. “Take your pick.”

“And me,” Sam says. He’s looking Dean in the face now, and Dean has to tilt his chin up to catch Sam’s eyes.

“No,” he says. “I was looking for you.” 

“This wasn’t the way to do it. Gadreel was looking for you, too, in the end. If you hadn’t done this to yourself it could’ve been over a lot sooner. He could have just found you.”

“That’s not what I mean. I wasn’t looking for Gadreel. I knew where he was. I always knew. I was tracking him. I was looking for _you_ , Sam.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Everything. There’s every difference. You aren’t him. I had to reach you because you were the only one who could force him out. But he kept you tucked away. Cas said it was like he was hiding you.”

“I thought I was in the bunker a lot of the time.” Sam backs away. He looks at his hands and he looks around the cabin as if he still isn’t sure he’s really here.

“That’s good,” Dean says. “I was worried…” Dean shrugs. He feels helpless. “I was worried that you knew.” 

“I did,” Sam says, wry. “I didn’t always think I was in the bunker. And after a while the bunker…it felt like a dream. Like I was there but wasn’t.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was working on. I’ve been trying to dream walk, but it isn’t… _wasn’t_ easy to find you. Gadreel was always in the way.” 

“You aren’t hearing me. I felt like I wasn’t there. I, I knew I was me, and I knew that I wasn’t conscious, and I knew…Gadreel was everywhere, you know? Even when he tried to keep me unaware. I just, even now I don’t feel like me. I don’t even feel like _me_ anymore. I can’t tell what’s Azazel, what’s Lucifer, or what’s Gadreel and between the three of them – well, there isn’t much room for me, is there.”

Sam’s close enough, Dean can feel his breath on his face. His hands are too hot against Dean’s skin, and he’s gripping Dean uncomfortably hard. It’s not hard enough. He wants more from his brother, and he deserves to be hurt more than this. 

“I wanted to die after the trials. I knew I was going to. I’d accepted it.”

“I didn’t,” Dean said. “I _won’t_ accept that. Not ever.”

Sam shoves him then, still holding him by the ribs and crushing him against the mantle. Dean groans at the sudden pain from his shoulder and tries to curl in on himself, but Sam gets his hands on Dean’s biceps and holds him up, holds him there. 

“You wanna hit me Sam? You wanna hurt me?” Dean stands as straight as possible against Sam’s hold. “Do it.”

Sam says nothing, his eyes dark, his face shadowed and dark, lines Dean doesn’t remember etched around his eyes and mouth. 

“Do it!” Dean shouts. 

He bucks against his brother’s hold, and Sam turns him and flings him backwards. Dean begins to lose his footing and is about to go down, but then Sam gets him by the arms again. He pulls Dean in until they’re chest to chest, so close that Dean can barely focus on him. His face is animated, alive with fury.

 

“If I wanted to hurt you, I’d tie you down so you couldn’t stop me, then walk into the other room and put a bullet in my head.”

Dean’s heart might as well stop. His blood might as well freeze. He might as well be back on the rack. “Sam--”

Sam shakes him, and Dean can’t fight the groan of pain. “Shut up,” Sam says. “You don’t get to say a goddamned word to me. You don’t get to tell me you’re sorry. You don’t get to tell me why I should live. And you sure as hell don’t get to tell me you did this for me. Isn’t that what you said to me when you got me to stop the trials? That every thing you do is for me?”

“It is. Fuck, Sammy, you gotta know that.”

“The fucked up thing is you actually believe that.”

He lets go of Dean, sudden, and Dean staggers to the couch. He’s pressing his hand to his hurt shoulder and curling down over his lap before he can even think. He’s not sure what hurts worse right now. His shoulder or Sam. 

“I should leave,” Dean chokes out eventually. “You don’t – you shouldn’t be around me. You aren’t wrong. I’m not…I know I’m not safe.”

“Neither one of us is leaving. This is the safest place for both of us right now.”

Dean looks at his brother. “Gadreel’s looking for you?”

A look of sudden, pure terror crosses Sam’s face, but he gets himself under control just as fast. 

“Of course he is,” he says. Then, “I’m tired,” right on its heels. His shoulders slump, and he eyes Dean and the couch warily. 

Dean nods. “Take my bed,” he says. He’s oddly conscious of the word _my_ , of taking ownership over something. Neither he nor Sam have ever been accustomed to that sort of thing, but four years of living in one place changes things, and with Sam here, he’s both ashamed of that ownership and oddly reluctant to give it up. He’s hurting, bad, and it’s going to be hard enough to sleep. But he’s not going to make Sam sleep on the couch, and he doesn’t hold out hope that he’ll ever share a bed with Sam again. 

Sam grunts acknowledgement. He turns to leave, but he stops just before he moves into the hallway to the bedroom. He looks like he wants to say something. His mouth is turned into a pout of a frown, and he looks exhausted and grumpy, and it reminds Dean of years ago, of the two-year-old who would never go down for his nap even if he was falling asleep where he stood. Dean’s chest aches thinking of a Sam innocent enough to never have known pain the way they have now known it. 

“You wanna say something else, Sammy?” Dean says. 

Sam sighs. He pushes his hair off his face. “Get some sleep, Dean.”

“You too.”

***

Dean wakes with the sun. It’s filtering through the front windows, too goddamned cheerful for its own goddamned good, and Dean is hungover and in pain and feeling every bit of his thirty-nine years. The dog is barking outside. Dean leaves it out there on nice nights and lets it do its thing. It keeps the coyotes and the foxes from slaughtering his hens, and the dog always seems happier for it. Though Dean supposes the holy fire will do a nice job of keeping wild life off his land now. He doubts a coyote would try to cross through.  
Thinking of the dog protecting his hens makes Dean think of fresh eggs with some diced tomato from his garden, and he decides to ignore the little voice that mocks him for being so damn domesticated now. 

He goes to check on Sam before anything else, though. 

Sam is flat on his back on Dean’s bed. He never got undressed and he’s on top of the covers. He’s got the handle of the angel blade clenched in his hand, but he’s sleeping hard and looks peaceful, and Dean decides not to disturb him. He tucks his hurt arm against his stomach and goes into the bathroom, pisses, cups water into his hand and gulps it straight from the faucet. It’s cold and it tastes good, and Dean pointedly does not think that he wishes he were drinking Jim Beam instead. He takes a handful of ibuprofen.

There’s a sling packed away with some other first-aid gear from the days when they were on the road.. He and Sam both have had need of it in the past. It’s a little dirty, and there’s a blood stain on it, but it holds Dean’s hurt arm in place, and that’s all he cares about at the moment. It’s gonna be a bitch getting the eggs one handed, but he only needs a few this morning, and maybe Sam will help out later. He thinks of the time Sam brought him to the farmer’s market and how strange and out of place Dean had felt, the color and smell of it overwhelming after a year in Purgatory. He wonders now if all of this – his little garden, his noisy overly friendly dog, his hens and his old rooster that terrorizes every living creature on Dean’s land, including Dean himself – if all of that will be overwhelming to Sam in the same way or if it will be a help to him. 

Outside, the air is crisp and clean. The sky is a bright blue like he’s inside a fucking Easter egg, and it’s unnerving to Dean that the holy fire is still burning silently, heatlessly. The dog greets him with a nose to the palm of his good hand and a good, hard tail-wagging, whole-body wiggle. It’s covered in mud and its mouth is open in a grin. Dean wants to grin back, but there isn’t one in him, so he scratches the dog’s ears instead and lets him into the house. He’s going to track mud everywhere, but Dean’s isn’t in any shape to wipe him down, so he doesn’t even try. 

The hens are sleeping and there’s a silence in their little coop that lets Dean breathe freer. He coos to them a bit when they wake as he snatches their eggs. He used to come out of this place with his hands bloody from them pecking at him, but he’s learned to finesse it by now, and even one-handed and unable to hold the basket, he comes out of their coop with a haul, the eggs oddly shaped and colored, some big and some small. It had freaked him out at first. He’d only ever seen eggs in a supermarket, white and uniform, or on a plate at a diner.  
He walks across the yard to his garden, sets the basket down next to the tomato plant and plucks two. He’ll have to pick it clean before the day’s out, otherwise they’ll drop and rot on the ground, a waste. He takes his switchblade from his back pocket and cuts some chive, too. His basket’s full of good, clean food, and he thinks it’s a start. It could be a start. Something as simple as making Sam breakfast. 

In his kitchen, he throws butter into the cast iron skillet and, awkwardly, one-handedly, cracks eggs into it one by one, cursing when he gets shell in the white and using a piece of the broken shell to try to fish it out. Once those are going, he pulls a loaf of bread from the freezer and tosses a few slices down into the butter, let’s all that cook up while he slices tomato. He gets lost in the rhythm of it. 

He’s piling everything onto a plate and cracking more eggs into the skillet when he notices the dog barking, low and insistent, the way it does when it wants Dean to know something. Dean shoves the skillet off the burner and moves, checking that he’s got his blade on him and grabbing the loaded shotgun from the kitchen table. He follows the dog’s barking to his bedroom, and at first he’s worried that something has come for Sam, but then he sees Sam sitting up in the bed, hunched over his lap, his hands and wrists covered in blood and one of Dean’s straight razors pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. 

He thinks immediately of the threat Sam made last night, and he’s on the bed in seconds, pushing his brothers shoulders back so Dean can get a good look. He takes the razor from Sam’s fingers, and he sets it on the bed before cradling Sam’s hands in his own. His heart is beating overtime, and he’s dizzy from it, and he’s mumbling nonsense to Sam, things like _It’s okay_ , and _you’re not hurt_ , and _You stupid fuck, I’m not gonna let you do this_. Sam is silent the entire time, his eyes tracking Dean’s hands as they move his. He looks disoriented, his eyes glassy with pain, and Dean is only a little relieved to find that Sam hasn’t cut his wrists at all. Instead, he’s cut his palms. He’s used the razor to etch the lines of the sigils directly into the skin.

“Jesus,” Dean says. “What did you do?”

“You have tattoos,” Sam says. “Thought it was a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, I had mine done by a professional. You could have bled out, or sliced through a tendon.”

“So?” Sam says.

Dean sighs, feeling suddenly more weary than he thought it was possible to feel. He ducks his head and tries to push the anger away.

“The marker was fading,” Sam says eventually. “I thought it would be better if it was permanent.”

“I could have taken you into town,” Dean says. He’s still staring at Sam’s bloody, carved up palms. The backs of Sam’s hands are resting on the points of Dean’s knees. 

“I’m not leaving this cabin,” Sam says. “I’m not crossing that line of holy fire.” 

“Sam—”

“He wants me back,” Sam says, “I can feel him.” He presses his and to his chest, smearing blood across his t-shirt. His voice is laced with panic, and if his hands hurt, he’s not letting it slow him down. “He’s close. He’s really fucking close. He’ll kill you, and he’ll take me, and he’ll burn the world.”

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean says. “It’s okay.”

“No it isn’t,” Sam says. “He hates human beings. He blames them for his imprisonment, for being weak enough to give in to Lucifer. He’d take us all out if he could, but he needs me to do it.”

“Sam,” Dean says, his voice sharp. He’s got his good hand on Sam’s neck now, where it curves gracefully into his shoulder, and he’s forcing Sam to look him in the eyes. “You’re safe here.” 

“Am I?” Sam asks. “Am I safe here with you?”

“How can you even doubt that?”

“You’re the one who let him in in the first place.”

“Sam…” Dean clenches his brother’s wrist tighter, then he clears his throat and pushes away from him. “Stay there,” he says.

He goes into the bathroom and gets the first aid kit. None of the cuts were deep, and Sam won’t need stitches, but Dean can clean and bandage the cuts, feed Sam, and then they can figure out where to go from there. 

Sam is still cross-legged on the bed when Dean walks back into the room. He looks almost zen with his hands propped palm up on his knees, and he watches Dean as Dean crosses the room to him and gets up onto the bed on his knees. 

“How’s your shoulder?” Sam says.

Dean looks up, cocks an eyebrow. He’s surprised Sam’s asking, even more surprised he sounds genuinely concerned. 

“Peachy,” Dean says.

“Don’t do that, Dean. I really want to know. If it’s – if you need to go to the hospital, you should.”

Dean shrugs his good shoulder and sits cross-legged in front of Sam. Their knees knock together, and when Dean pulls Sam’s right hand to his lap, he thinks of years ago, of Sam sitting cross-legged in front of a Ouija board and Dean – spirit Dean – settling in across from him and thinking how grateful he was that Sam was his brother. He swallows and pushes down the regret and the thought of years of strain between them, and he dabs at Sam’s hand with a cotton ball soaked in iodine.

“Dean,” Sam says.

“I don’t need a hospital, Sam,” Dean says. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. 

“So you get to say you’re sorry and I don’t?”

“I actually mean it,” Sam says. He hisses and his fingers curl up when the iodine stings, but he opens his hand again immediately and lets Dean continue.

“I mean it, too,” Dean says.

“You aren’t sorry you did it, Dean,” Sam says. He huffs out a tired breath and hunches his shoulders. “You’re just sorry it turned out badly. There’s a difference.” 

Dean takes Sam’s other hand and begins to clean that one. He doesn’t respond. Dean doesn’t see the distinction, and when it comes to him and Sam sacrificing themselves for each other, that’s always been the sticking point. Dean believes the ends justify the means, if the end is saving Sam. Sam used to feel the same about Dean. 

When Dean’s finished cleaning Sam’s hands, he wraps fresh gauze over the wound. “I made breakfast,” he says. 

“I’m not hungry,” Sam says. He scoots away from Dean and leans against the wall at the head of the bed. 

“Have you eaten since you woke up?”

“No.”

“I’m going to get you food. Stay there.”

Sam sighs loudly, exaggeratedly as Dean leaves the room. “I’m not a kid, Dean,” he calls. He sounds pissy, and it makes Dean feel a bit better. 

The food’s cold, so Dean scrapes everything into the dog’s bowl and starts over. When he’s got two plates full of eggs and toast and thickly sliced tomatoes, he pours juice, holds the glasses against his torso in the crooks of his elbows and balances it all, the dog dancing at his feet as he walks back to the bedroom. 

Sam’s sitting cross-legged with Dean’s pillow in his lap. Dean sets Sam’s plate on the pillow and hands Sam the juice, then he settles in next to Sam. He stretches his legs out long and crosses them at the ankle. He’s very aware of how close he is to Sam right now. They’ll bump elbows as they eat. Sam doesn’t seem to mind. At least, he doesn’t move away. Dean can remember how, when they were kids, they always sat next to each other while they ate, stuffed in one side of a booth, fighting for space, deliberately bumping each other, digging elbows into ribs, stealing food from each other’s plates, their dad silent and hungover or buried in research sitting across from them, giving a grumbled _boys_ in warning when they got too loud. Then later, when they were on their own, and after they started fucking around then fucking in earnest, they’d sit across from each other, feet tangled together beneath the table, fighting to be closer instead of fighting for space. Dean wants that again.

Dean looks at Sam, who is practically inhaling his food. “Thought you weren’t hungry,” Dean says. He smiles a little.

“S’good,” Sam says. He’s piling eggs onto a piece of toast, and he shoves almost an entire slice into his mouth in one go then licks his fingers. “I’ve never had eggs this good.”

“Yeah, they’re, uh, they’re fresh. I’ve got a chicken coop.”

Sam pauses mid-bite and looks at Dean. “Seriously?” he says. 

He’s got bright yellow egg goo smeared over the gauze wrap on the back of his hand and it makes Dean crack a smile then laugh out loud before he can stop himself. Sam smiles in response. “Chickens?” he says.

“You’re a mess, man,” Dean says. He uses his thumb to wipe a bit of egg from Sam’s wrist. “Yeah, chickens. It’s easier than driving into town. There was a guy selling hens on the side of the road.”

“You bought hens from the side of the road?” Sam says.

“Uh, yeah?” He rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. 

“I feel like I woke up in bizarro world.”

“I feel like that every single day, man.”

Sam laughs a little, like he’s actually amused but reluctant about it. Dean almost asks if they’ll get past this, but he doesn’t want Sam to stop smiling. 

***

The next weeks are strained. There’s more bad than there is good. Sam is paranoid and barely hiding it. Three times Dean catches him carving sigils into his own skin, and once, he carves so deeply into his arm that Dean really thinks he’s going to bleed out. Sam watches Dean stitch the wound with cold, blank eyes, and he doesn’t speak to Dean for four days after that except at night when he wakes screaming and he lets Dean sit next to him on the bed and talk to him, say anything to pull him out of it. He tells Sam about learning to garden; he tells Sam about his first year in the cabin, how he hadn’t had heat and he was too drunk or stoned on pills half the time to cut firewood; he tells Sam about finding a litter of mutts just inside the tree line, and how all of them were dead but one, and how Dean had almost put the last one down to spare it some misery, but it’s little mewls had been so fucking pitiful Dean couldn’t do anything but try to keep it warm and fed; he tells Sam about building a funeral pyre for Kevin and how he’d never built a funeral pyre on his own and how he’d gotten so drunk afterwards that he caught his jacket on fire and had barely been quick enough to put it out. He still has a patch of shiny, burnt skin on the inside of his right wrist, and he can’t look at it without thinking about Kevin, then thinking about Sam, then wanting so badly to get lost in a bottle he physically aches from trying not to. 

“You haven’t been drinking since I woke up,” Sam says. 

Dean doesn’t tell him he’s just been drinking where Sam can’t see it. He figures Sam will learn soon enough, and he’ll be disappointed but not surprised. It’s one more problem Sam doesn’t need right now.

Because Sam starts talking to him, too, finally, after so many nightmares, and after so many nights of Dean refusing to leave him alone with them. And Dean doesn’t want him to stop. He says he hasn’t had nightmares this bad since Jess, and Dean can tell the admission costs him something. Sam didn’t talk about his nightmares then, though Dean knew about them. Of course he knew. But he and Sam were still too new with each other, then. They were still working at bridging four years apart and the mound of resentment that had built from it. There hadn’t been years of hunting, there hadn’t been a history of falling into bed with each other when things got too bad, then a longer history of spending every night tangled in each other, either sleeping or fucking, even when they were mad. 

They aren’t doing that now, and though Dean misses it – misses the warmth of Sam’s body, misses the stretch and burn of Sam’s big, rough fingers inside of him, the smile on Sam’s lips as he takes Dean’s cock into his mouth, the aimless talking afterwards – it iss somehow worse now that he has Sam here and still can’t touch him the way he wants to. But at least Sam is talking now. 

The talking helps. Dean hates the back and forth of it, doesn’t like having all their shit out in the open. He prefers to bury it, drown it, fight it out, but Sam is becoming more and more himself by the day. He doesn’t talk in any real direction. He just says whatever he’s thinking when he surfaces from his dreams, panting and sweating, his heart beating too fast and his hands clutching at Dean for those few seconds his guard is too far down to keep him from reaching out. But then he settles, and he pulls away from Dean, and Dean sits with him while he talks.

He says things like, “Gadreel used Ezekial’s name because he admired him. He knew Ezekial was loved by the other angels in a way he couldn’t be.”

He says, “Gadreel liked to talk to me. I think he was lonely. He’d wake me up just to talk.”

He says, “Metatron talked Gadreel into eating a corn dog this one time, and Gadreel started eating them whenever he could. He likes them, like, a crazy amount. He’d leave me awake when he ate.” He snorts, bitter. “He said he wanted to share the experience with me.”

“He thought I might understand him better,” Sam says, “that I might be able to understand why he was making the choices he made if he left me awake on some of his missions. Missions. That’s what he called them.” Sam shakes his head. “I watched him use _my_ hands, watched him do inane things like tie his shoelace with my hands or twirl a blade of grass between my fingers. And I watched him slaughter people. It was…I don’t know, man. With Lucifer? When he let me out? I felt whole. Distinct. Like I was in my body and looking at my reflection. I was me and he was him. But with Gadreel inside me, it was like being disembodied, like _I_ was the voice inside _his_ head. Does that…Does that make sense? I don’t know how to…Can you understand what that’s like?”

Dean shakes his head. He’s sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed this night. His hand is resting on Sam’s bare ankle, his thumb brushing through the coarse hair over smooth skin. It’s taken weeks for Sam to allow something like that, and Dean’s doing it as much for Sam’s comfort as his own. 

It’s not pain in Sam’s voice—it’s confusion. As if Sam really can’t make sense of the past four years spent with Gadreel riding his body. And Sam has to make sense of things. He’s never been one to let something lie. He has to pick at it. For all Dean is the mechanic, Sam is the one who really likes to pull a thing apart and figure out how the pieces all add up and work together. 

“The first time I came to,” Sam says, “I think it must have been months after Kevin. I don’t know, though. Time was…wrong. I never knew how much time had passed. He woke me to apologize that first time. That’s what he said, anyway. There was a spell, and he’d killed a ten-year-old girl for her blood, and he said he felt broken, beyond saving, no matter what Metatron promised him. He thought I might understand that.” Sam’s lips twist like he’s trying very hard not to frown. “I was too confused about where I was, though, so he put me back to sleep. He said _my soul was crying_. He said he didn’t want to upset me. That it wasn’t his intention. Jesus, Dean.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sam ignores him. “I mean, how could something like that _not_ upset me?” 

Dean squeezes Sam’s ankle. “Angels are dicks, Sammy. We’ve been around Cas so long that I think it’s easy to forget they don’t give a shit about humans. And the few who do don’t understand humans enough not to botch it.”

“I don’t know if that’s specific to angels,” Sam says. “We tend to botch everything we touch.”

Dean laughs a little, though the sound is right on the edge of unhappy. It would be funnier if Sam weren’t mostly true. “We don’t botch everything. We’ve done some things right.”

“Like?”

“We put Lucifer in his cage.”

“Yeah, after I let him out.”

“You were set up, Sam.”

“Don’t,” Sam says. He waves his hand through the air to cut Dean off, and Dean gets a flash of the almost healed sigil carved into his palm, pink and shiny-tight with new skin, still scabbed over in all the places he’d sliced more deeply. “Don’t rehash that shit. I made my peace with what I did. Doesn’t change the fact that I did it, though. Doesn’t change all the people we’ve killed, and all the shit we stirred making the wrong decisions.”

“There’s a lot of shit I’d change,” Dean says, “hindsight being what it is. But I wouldn’t change saving your life, Sam. Not that first time when I sold my soul, and not this last time.”

“Like I said,” Sam says. “We make the wrong decisions, you and I. Every single time. It’s getting to where I don’t even trust my instincts anymore.” 

“It wasn’t the wrong decision.”

Sam talks over him. “Like now,” he says. “Every instinct I have is screaming at me to get out of here. Go find somewhere to hide where Gadreel won’t find me. Where you won’t find me.” 

Dean looks away from Sam. Nods his head once, his jaw tight, the tendons in his neck straining, a needle burning cold and piercing his chest. “Why don’t you then,” he says. His voice is flat.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I guess…maybe because I think it might be the wrong decision.”

Just like that, the needle is pulled from Dean’s chest. He isn’t one to hope, but Sam is the one good thing in his life. If he’s going to hope, Sam’s forgiveness is the only thing to hope for.. Sam’s words are not _that_ , and Dean knows it. But it’s a step closer. 

***

 

Dean falls asleep in the bed with Sam that night. He doesn’t think that Sam would have let him sleep there, but Sam fell asleep before him, and Dean was warm and comfortable, and so he stayed at the foot of the bed and slept. He slept on his back with a pillow beneath his bum shoulder. Sam’s feet were tucked against his side. 

When Dean wakes, Sam’s eyes are open. He’s curled up into a relaxed fetal position, his head resting on his arm, and he’s watching Dean. That’s something he’s been doing more of lately. Those first few weeks after Sam came to, he avoided Dean. He spent all day with the books Dean took from the bunker or worked the garden, weeding and picking and showing a natural talent for tending that had taken Dean over two years to cultivate. With Sam in the house but paying Dean no mind, Dean felt like a ghost, pent up, stuck in his own home, angry and anxious and unsure how to move past it. So the fact that Sam is watching Dean now, as if he’s interested in what Dean does with his days, as if he wants to keep Dean in his sight, well, that’s new, and it makes Dean unsure of himself, embarrassed of his little cabin and the life he’s made here. He hasn’t had to be accountable to anyone but himself and the dog for a long time, and the sudden scrutiny is unnerving Dean yawns wide and cracks a grin, but when he moves to stretch, the grin turns to grimace pretty quickly. He tries to hide it, but Sam’s already sitting up and looking concerned. He rests with his elbows on his knees and looks down at Dean. 

“Your shoulder isn’t healing,” he says.

“It’s healing,” Dean says, which is mostly a lie. Dean’s shoulder is healing, but it isn’t healing well. A few days after Sam woke and put a knife in him, the wound was red and inflamed, and though Dean couldn’t feel his fingers then and can’t still, there’s nothing stopping the pain that shoots out from the entry point, growing in steady pulses until his arm is on fire with it and he can’t think of much else. Tylenol can’t touch it. It feels hot, and there’s a deep unnatural ache that wraps around his shoulder and works its way down his neck and spine. He started taking antibiotics he had stashed away, and he plucked the stitches from the wound, washed it as thoroughly as possible, and stitched himself up again. The stitches aren’t as neat as Sam’s, but they keep the wound closed, and so it will heal without Dean drudging up that first night again, even if the pain of it lingers. 

“Oh yeah?” Sam says, his voice laced with skepticism. 

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice is gruff. He wants coffee and he wants pain killers, and Sam asking him questions about his arm is going to kill his good mood. 

Sam moves quick, then, and darts his foot out to shove Dean in the shoulder. He hits the shoulder gently, but that doesn’t stop Dean from groaning and curling away from Sam .

“Son of a bitch,” he says. “It’s healing. Jesus.”

“It’s been what? A month? You shouldn’t be in this much pain still.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Sam.”

“Can I look at it?” Sam says.

“Do you _want_ to look at it?” Dean says. 

Sam lets out an exaggerated, log-suffering sigh and scoots down on the bed until he’s sitting next to Dean and facing him, his hip against Dean’s him, his foot tucked up under the pillow cradling Dean’s shoulder. 

“Of course I do,” Sam says.

Dean doesn’t have a shirt on – he lost it sometime in the night, though he doesn’t remember waking up to take it off – and Sam reaches for the bandage, works gently to get his thumb nail beneath one of the edges, then slowly peels it away from Dean’s skin. Dean knows what Sam will see – a jagged wound that’s only just begun to heal, uneven stitches that should be ready to remove by now, though they’re not.

“You redid these yourself?” Sam says. He touches the edges of the wound with his fingertips, looking concerned when Dean winces and pulls away from the touch. The quick movement hurts, and Dean just barely holds back a groan. “Why didn’t you ask me to fix the stitches if they needed to be redone?”

“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Dean says.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Sit up,” he says. He grabs Dean by his other bicep and tugs, and Dean struggles to comply.

“Fuck, Sammy,” he says. “Watch the goods.”

“Sorry, Princess. I forgot you were so delicate.”

“You’re a fucking sasquatch,” Dean says. “Pawing all over me. I’m a wounded man, Sammy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, but he’s full on grinning, and Dean can’t help but grin in response. 

They sit there grinning at each other like a couple of loons until Sam finally coughs and looks away. 

“Um,” he says. 

“It’s all right, Sammy,” Dean says. “You can look. I know I’m pretty.” 

“Shut up,” Sam says. “Lift your arm for me.”

“Kinky,” Dean says, but he feels his pulse speed because he knows what’s going to happen He moves to lift his arm and there’s a sudden throb of pain as his arm seizes up on him. When he tucks it back against his torso, his arm starts tingling as if he’s fallen asleep on it. Dean peeks up at Sam’s worried expression.. He’s got his furrowed _I’m really fucking concerned_ brow going, and maybe it’s fucked, but Dean can’t help but feel a little happy that Sam isn’t so pissed at him that it would override his concern. 

“That’s not good, Dean,” Sam says.

“Ya think?”

Sam ignores him. “You should’ve gone to the hospital.”

“Sam…” Dean rubs his hand down his face. “I can’t. I don’t own this place – I’m squatting, and I don’t know if people in town would recognize my face. I show up with a knife wound and the police start asking questions? They may be hicks but I can’t count on them being stupid and I don’t wanna be run off this land. Then there’s the money issue. I haven’t done a credit scam in years and I don’t have a fake or a real health insurance card.”

“So we find a clinic a few towns over.”

“We?” Dean says. “I thought you weren’t leaving the great ring of fire out there.”

“Can you drive like that?”

“Of course I can drive,” Dean says, offended. 

Sam laughs. “Sure you can,” he says. “Get dressed. I’ll find a clinic.” 

***

Dean’s been keeping the Impala under a tarp. He hates it. When Sam helps him pull the tarp off of her, something inside of him wakes up, and he runs his good hand over his baby’s smooth lines, promises her he’ll take her out more often, promises her that Sam will wash her. Sam just watches him. He looks a little amused, but mostly sad. He’s looking at the car like it’s a ghost, and it’s a harsh reminder to Dean that Sam hasn’t seen this car in four years. 

Dean clears his throat. “There’s a hose coiled around back,” he says.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m not washing your car, Dean.”

“For the holy fire,” Dean says. “I’m not driving my baby through that shit.”

Sam sobers. “Oh.”

“Hey, Sam?” Dean says. “You don’t need to do this, man. It’ll be a bitch, but I can drive. You can stay here. Play it safe.”

“I’m fine,” Sam says. “The sigils work.”

“They do,” Dean agrees. 

It’s been a week since Sam’s cut himself, but the instinct is still there. He’s skeptical about Dean’s designs, and he’s itching to carve more protection into his skin. He keeps a switchblade with him, and Dean catches him sitting and staring into space, flicking the blade open and closed, open and closed. He traces the lines of the sigils with the tip of the knife, never pressing hard enough to break the skin. He makes modifications to Dean’s designs and draws the new sigils carefully on his forearms with Sharpie, and he touches them up regularly.

 

Sam studies Dean’s face for a moment. When he’s satisfied with whatever he sees, he disappears around the back of the cabin and comes back with the hose looped around his arm and dragging through the grass behind him. The front of his shirt is wet – the hose leaks perpetually, and Dean hasn’t gotten around to fixing it yet – but he doesn’t seem to notice. He walks out into the yard and stares into the holy fire. He pushes his hair out of his face with the arm not wrapped in hose. He takes a few steps back. Dean walks up behind him. He can see Sam’s throat moving. He’s swallowing, a tick of Sam’s when he’s nervous. Dean puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder, and though Sam jumps and looks over his shoulder at Dean, he doesn’t pull away.

“The sigils work, Sam.”  
“You promise me,” Sam says. “Right now.”

“I do. I promise.”

“No,” Sam says. He faces Dean. “If something happens. If I get hurt. That bastard doesn’t get me again.”

“I won’t let him anywhere near you,” Dean says. “That’s a promise. I’ll stab him in the heart if I see him again.”

Sam is staring at Dean, searching his face for something, so Dean tries to show that he means it. That he’s not going to break this promise. Gadreel is not taking Sam from him again.

Dean doesn’t know what makes him do it, what makes him think Sam won’t pull away or throw a punch, but Dean steps in close, touches Sam’s cheek, goes up on his toes, and kisses his brother. It’s a dry, chaste press of lips, and Sam, surprised, keeps his eyes open. When Dean pulls back, Sam looks a little steadier. Which is funny, because Dean feels shaky as hell after the kiss. Sam’s taste lingers, and Dean fights a sudden fear that he’ll never taste him again. His pulse throbs at his temples, so intense he can hear it, that _whoosh woosh_ of the blood pumping through his veins and echoing in his ears. But there’s something else in Dean now, too – there’s a rapidly growing sense of finally having his brother back in a real way, and a feeling that they’ve maybe made it through this one. 

Sam smiles. It looks tentative, and he turns his face from Dean’s. 

“Here goes nothing,” he says, and he turns the hose on. 

It always surprises Dean how quickly holy fire disappears. It doesn’t fight for claim the way real fire does. At the first touch of water, the holy fire is gone. It leaves no trace, as if it was never there at all.

***

“What’s your dog’s name?” Sam says. 

They’ve been driving for over an hour, not a word shared between them. The sky is that kind of open, endless blue that Dean’s only seen in the Midwest, and the Ozarks roll around them, green hills and full reaching trees and rock cliffs that have been blown out to make way for the two lane roads that wind through this area. It feels good, Sam and Dean on the road in the Impala. Dean can almost pretend things are how they used to be.

“You’ve been at the cabin for a month, and you’re just now asking?” Dean says.

“You always just call it ‘the dog,’” Sam says.

“That’s because that’s its name,” Dean says.

“You’re kidding,” Sam says. “You never named it?”

“I did name it. I named it ‘the dog’.”

Dean grins at Sam.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sam says. 

“It works, doesn’t it?” Dean says.

“I thought you would’ve named it Jimmy Page.”

“I could’ve named it Princess.”

“You could’ve named it jerk.”

Dean laughs. “Page isn’t a bad name, you know?” he says. “Maybe it’s time she had a name. She’s a good dog.”

“You’ve got her trained pretty well,” Sam says. 

Dean tries to shrug. He rubs at a stain on his jeans with his thumb. He decides to say what he’s thinking. “It was lonely. It, um, she helped. The dog. It helped.”

Sam glances at him. He looks back at the road and doesn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he sighs. When he talks, he just sounds tired. “What am I supposed to say to that, Dean?”

“Nothing, Sam. I didn’t say it to get a response.”

“Well, why did you say it?”

“I don’t know. Fuck, just forget it.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you. You were lonely? I had a fucking angel riding me. I lost four years of my life.”

“I get it,” Dean says. His voice is rough. He doesn’t say _but you have your life back now_ , even though he thinks it. Because he knows that Sam has a death wish.. He doesn’t like it, and he can’t accept it, but he understands.

They don’t talk the rest of the drive, and Dean doesn’t try. They’re both uncomfortable. Sam’s shoulders are tense, and he’s holding the steering wheel hard enough for his knuckles to turn white. And it’s hours before they’ll get to the out-of-the-way clinic Sam found, and nothing Dean thinks can help him settle in for the rest of the ride. 

***

The doctor is a stern thirty-something with a pile of blonde hair in a bun on top of her head. She looks tired, and her white coat is wrinkled, and there’s a finger print on the lens of her glasses. She looks at Dean over the tops of them and asks him if he’s insane or if he’s just stupid.

“Because you should have had this looked at, what? A month ago? Is that about when this happened.”

“Look lady—”

“Don’t ‘look lady’ me. You probably severed the brachial plexus and you’re lucky you didn’t sever the brachial artery, too.”

“I get that,” Dean says. “What do I need to do?”

She sighs and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Are you in a motorcycle club?”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “No,” he says. 

“Who stabbed you?” 

“None of your business.”

“You want me to call the police? Something tells me you don’t want that. You aren’t from around here. I’d know. Which means you traveled here, which means you’re trying to stay under the radar.”

“Christo,” Dean says.

“Excuse me?”

Dean huffs out a laugh, amused despite himself. “Look, I promise I’m not in a biker gang, and yeah I’m not from around here, but that’s just because I travel for my job, which is getting more and more difficult to do the longer this goes untreated.”

“And your six-foot-five body guard out there?” she says. “Did he do this?”

“No,” Dean says. 

“Should I be worried about domestic abuse? If you need help, there’s a halfway house in the next town that caters to people in your circumstances.”

“My circumstances? You mean traveling salesmen who get jumped?”

“No. Gay men who get beat on by their boyfriends. Or gay teens that get kicked out of their homes, but you look a little too old for that.”

“Are you fucking with me?” Dean says.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “Lift your arm.”

“I can’t,” Dean says.

“Humor me,” she says. 

Dean tries, and it’s pretty much impossible. Besides the pain, his shoulder feels alarmingly weak. 

The doctor _hmms_ then presses at the outside of his arm just below his shoulder. “Feels weak here?” she says. “Numb?”

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“Alright,” she says. She keeps her left hand where it is on the outside of his arm, and she presses her other hand against the inside of his bicep. “Work with me here, okay? We’re gonna raise this arm.”

Dean feels her pressing upward, and though it’s miserable, he manages to lift his arm some this time, when his elbow is high enough to be level with his shoulder, he flinches and squirms out of her grasp before he can stop himself. 

“Sorry,” he says. 

“You should have an MRI done,” she says. “I don’t have the equipment here, though.”

“Well that’s helpful,” Dean says.

“Hey, asshole. You’re the one who came here. There’s a hospital two miles to the East.

“Fine,” Dean says. “What do I need to do?”

She sighs. “I’ll print you out a sheet of exercises and some information on brachial nerve injuries. Nerve damage is serious, though. I can’t promise you’ll ever gain full use. These kinds of injuries are tricky. Sometimes they heal spontaneously. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they need surgery.” 

“Great.”

“My opinion? Do the exercises. Your boyfriend can help you. I’ll give you muscle relaxers and pain killers. _Rest it_ ,” she says. “Nothing macho. No trying to do more than that arm wants to do, you got me?”

“I got you.”

“Good,” she says. “And come back in a month.”

Dean finds Sam in the lobby and they sit together in silence while they wait for the doctor to bring his prescriptions and exercises to them. Sam stands when the doctor approaches them, and Dean watches her give him the once over, like she’s sizing him up. She gives him the papers instead of Dean.

“Thanks, doc,” Sam says. He sounds sincere, and Dean finds it disconcerting that he can’t tell whether Sam is being honest or faking it. He’s good at faking sincerity.

“Take care of him,” she says. She disappears back into the clinic without another word.

“See, Sammy,” Dean says. “You’re stuck with me. Doctor’s orders.”

***

Sam says nothing in the car. Dean is hungry, and he points out every diner or roadhouse they pass, and still Sam says nothing. He’s going the wrong direction to get out of town, and Dean wants to ask, but he knows better than to poke a bear. When they pull into a gravel parking lot in front of a no-name tattoo shop, Dean gets it. 

“Sam,” Dean says. 

“Are you really going to try to talk me out of this,” Sam says. He looks at Dean, questioning. 

Dean huffs out a breath. “No, man. I get it. It’s just…don’t you think carving up your hands and arms is enough?”

“Scars fade,” Sam says.

Dean looks at the tattoo parlor. Makes a face. “Fuck,” he says. “You’re gonna catch a disease at this joint.”

“I’ve been looking at this place for weeks,” Sam says. “I’ve done my research. This place will do.” 

“You planned this?” Dean says. “So leaving the cabin wasn’t really about my shoulder?”

“It was. But when I looked the clinic up, I tried to find one close. I want this, you know? I think I need this.”

“Sam…” Dean says. He can’t stand it anymore. Slowly, carefully, he slides across the front seat until they’re close together, their arms brushing. He wants to touch Sam, but it’s awkward with his right arm in a sling and his left arm jammed between them. He turns and leans his forehead into Sam’s shoulder, the point of his nose dragging along the cotton of Sam’s t-shirt. “I’m sorry,” he says, barely audible. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Don’t,” Sam says. But he isn’t pulling away. 

Dean takes a deep breath. “I am sorry. I know you don’t buy it, and I get that. I get that you don’t have any reason to trust me. But I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t know how to let go of you. I can’t…I can’t think straight when it’s you, man. I think about you dying and everything just goes blue. Everything shuts down. The only thing in my head is _Save Sammy_ , over and over again. I don’t know how to _not_ save you.”

“I know,” Sam says.  
Dean presses his lips to Sam’s arm. Sam shifts, and Dean makes to pull away, but Sam catches him with a hand around the nape of his neck. He pulls Dean in close, presses Dean’s face to his chest, and he presses a kiss to the top of Dean’s head. 

Dean’s waiting for Sam to talk. He knows what he’s hoping to hear, that Dean’s right, that they’re in this together still. But Sam doesn’t say anything. He spreads his fingers against the back of Dean’s hair, cradling Dean’s skull. He could crush Dean if he wanted to. Dean’s felt everything from Sam’s hands – felt pleasure, the flick of his thumb nail against the head of Dean’s cock, the brush of his fingers against Dean’s nipples; and he’s felt pain – Sam punches like Tyson, and he’s wicked in bed, everything just the right side of too rough. Sam’s gentle now though, like he’s not even thinking about touching Dean, like it just is. Like it’s just where he wants to be right now and what he wants to be doing. Like he’s doing it just to be doing it. 

He’s relaxing against Sam, the tension slipping away, bit by bit. “You smell good,” Dean mumbles. 

“Smell like sweat,” Sam says. “Forgot what it’s like to be in a car all day.”

“It feels good,” Dean says. “Been a long time.”

Sam’s quiet for a few minutes, and Dean worries he’s fucked up again, but then Sam says. “The cabin’s good, though. I like it there. You did a good job with it.”

Dean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think Sam would appreciate that right now. 

Eventually, Sam pushes Dean away, though he’s careful about it so that he doesn’t jostle Dean’s arm. They go into the tattoo parlor together, and Sam takes a carefully folded piece of paper from his back pocket. He’s got the sigils drawn out perfectly. They’re the only customers, and while Sam talks to the artist, Dean walks around and pretends to be interested in the flash covering the walls. The truth is, Dean’s never really liked tattoos. He’s too much his father’s son, and his father, for all he was a marine and a hunter and gruff and bad ass, was a clean-cut, Kansas-grown conservative when it came to this sort of thing. He wonders what his dad would think of them now and all they’ve done. But that train of thought never leads anywhere good. He wants to think their dad would be proud of them, but there are times Dean just isn’t sure. 

“Dean,” Sam says. 

Dean walks over to Sam. “Yeah?”

“Can you show him? He wants to see the placement.” 

Dean lifts his t-shirt, lets the guy get a look. Sam’s looking too, his eyes catching and dragging across Dean’s torso. Dean knows Sam well enough to know he likes what he sees. Weeks ago, when Dean first showed Sam the tattoos, Sam’s gaze had been detached. But there’s want on Sam’s face now, and Dean responds to it, let’s his body relax, poses subtly. 

“All right, boys,” the tattoo artist says after a few moments. “You gonna get inked or you gonna get fucked?”

“Both, hopefully,” Dean says, before he can stop himself.

Sam, to Dean’s surprise, cracks a blushing grin and laughs. The tattoo artist doesn’t look like he approves, but he just shakes his head and tells them he’ll see them in a few before he disappears to make the stencils. 

“This life agrees with you,” Sam says. “You look good.”

“Are you flirting, Sammy?” Dean says.

“Just stating a fact.”

“Uh huh.”

Dean takes a seat when the tattoo artist comes back. He watches as Sam takes his shirt off and lies out on a table that keeps his back arched and his sides exposed. He looks vulnerable, and Dean thinks about laying Sammy out like that for himself, tying him down, playing with him. His fingers ache to touch as he watches the artist get started. Sam’s pulls a face when the needle first touches skin, but other than that, he’s silent while the guy works. Dean zones out, watching the artist trace lines in black ink into his brother’s skin, watching him wipe the excess away with a cloth. It’s almost hypnotizing. Dean’s pain killers are kicking in, and both Sam and the artist seem to have forgotten about him, so Dean lets himself doze. 

Gadreel is in his dream. Dean is certain it’s a dream, the way he was always certain when Cas visited him this way, but knowing the angel isn’t really there and doesn’t know where Dean is doesn’t make the situation any less unnerving. 

In his dream, he’s standing on a hill and he knows it’s not too far from his cabin. He can see the Ozark Mountains, and the sky is grey-washed. The whole world is grey-washed. Dean can hear the Impala rumbling somewhere, though he doesn’t see her. He feels cold. Lonely. It’s the kind of dream where he knows he’ll wake aching and panicky. He hasn’t had this kind of dream since Sam showed up in his woods. 

Gadreel is standing off to the side of Dean as if, even in Dean’s dreams, he doesn’t want to get too close. 

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Dean says. It sounds less threatening than he wants it to.

“I just came to talk,” Gadreel says.

“I don’t give a fuck. Get out.”

“Please,” Gadreel says. “We were friends once, you and I.”

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

I know there is a lot of bad blood between us now, but Sam is still alive. I never lied about that. The least you can do is talk to me for a moment.”

“Just get to the point.” Dean says. He wonders how he can feel so exhausted in a dream.

“I cannot locate Sam,” Gadreel says. 

He takes a step closer to Dean, and Dean moves to grab the angel blade from its sheath. 

“It’s not there,” says Gadreel. “I do have some measure of control over this dream. And it’s not like it would hurt me here, anyway.” 

Gadreel shrugs, a strangely human gesture that Dean doesn’t remember him ever making while in Sam’s body and traveling with Dean. He’d always seemed awkward then, like he was wearing a tuxedo that was tailored for someone else. He wonders if the shrug is a behavior learned from this new vessel, the vessel he’d been wearing when he’d first come to Dean, or if he’d learned some measure of human behavior from Sam. 

“Now,” he says. “Like I said. I cannot locate Sam.”

“And you’re stupid enough to think I’m going to help you.”

“No,” Gadreel says. He shakes his head. “I’m glad I cannot locate him.”

Dean raises his eyebrow. 

“Sam forced me out, and I was furious at first, but I have had time to think.” 

“Did it hurt?” Dean says. 

Gadreel looks puzzled for a moment, then he smiles. “Oh,” he says. “I get it. That’s funny. I forgot how funny you could be, Dean.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Fucking angels. Jesus. Now talk before I wake up and leave your ass here.”

“You’ll wake up when I’m ready for you to wake up.”

Dean’s pulse quickens slightly, but he doesn’t show fear. He’s never shown fear in front of an angel, and he won’t start now. 

“I have decided to no longer work with Metatron. He is not honest in what he says he wants.”

“Duh,” Dean says. 

“But Metatron…he has ways of making me do his bidding.”

“You won’t find Sam.”

“Good. If I can’t find him, Metatron can’t. And Metatron is looking. I am strong in this body, but I am stronger with Sam. His body was meant to hold the Lightbringer. Nothing I could do could break down his vessel. So Metatron wants me to have him. If it were not for that, he would leave the two of you alone.”

“So, you want me to keep hiding him,” Dean says, his voice flat. He’s looking for the other shoe. He doesn’t trust a word coming out of Gadreel’s mouth; he’s made that mistake before and it’s a mistake he won’t make again. 

“I do,” Gadreel says.

“What’s the rub? Because you putting all this effort to get inside my head just to tell me to keep doing something I’m already doing? That don’t swing with me. Something’s going on here.”

“I know it must seem that way. But you and Sam, you both have a history of getting in the way. When you were alone, you had no fight in you. But now that you’re with Sam, there’s a very good chance you will begin hunting again. And when you do, and when Metatron hears of it, he will find you, and he will give me Sam, and he will kill you so that Sam has no reason to want to force me out again.”

“That won’t happen because I won’t _let_ that happen, you fucking fluff ball.” 

“Good,” Gadreel say. “See that it doesn’t happen.”

Dean blinks awake with Sam’s hand on his shoulder. 

“Rise and shine, kiddo,” he says. 

Dean rubs his eyes, then he stretches backwards, popping his back.

“You’re too old to be falling asleep in chairs, grandpa,” Sam says.

“Speak for yourself, grandpa…lover.”

“That was a good one, Dean. Anyone ever tell you you’re real cute when you’re woke up?”

Dean mock frowns. “What put you in such a good mood?”

“You’ve been out for hours, man,” Sam says. He laughs, and it’s a genuine happy sound. “Got my tat while you were sleeping. I don’t know, I just…I feel good now, you know? Better.”

“Good,” Dean says. “I’m glad, Sam.” 

And he is glad. He might not trust Gadreel, but it’s not like he needs to listen to an angel to know how important it is to keep his brother safe. If Dean has his way, Sam will never be in the line of fire again.

***

Sam talks almost non-stop when they’re first back on the road. The sun is falling, fading in the west and the sky is pink with it, like a blood stain washed out. Sam tells him he’ll have to get the other sigil done another day, that the guy only had time for the one, the angel one, of course, but he wants it done soon. He thinks he’ll find a different tattoo parlor. Thinks it important not to get them all done in the same place. He knows Gadreel has no problem killing humans to get what he wants, and he doesn’t want to risk it.

Dean needs to tell Sam about the dream. With the history between them, it’s the only option. They said no secrets a long time ago and Dean broke that promise when he let Gadreel ride his brother and kept it from him while Sam was still with him. So, yeah, he needs to tell Sam. But Sam is happy right now. Honestly happy. And Dean doesn’t know how he’ll react..  
“Will you ever hunt again?” Sam says, and it’s surprising enough to pull Dean from his thoughts.

“What? Why?” Dean says.

“It’s what you do, isn’t it? What we do? I mean, we both know what happens when we try to stay out of the life.”

Sam’s looking sideways at him. A few years ago, Dean might have thought this a trick question. Sam seems nothing but curious now, though. 

“I’ve been out of the life for four years, now,” Dean says. “I’m not gonna say it’s been easy. It fucking sucks sometimes, man, but…I don’t know. It’s been working. I’m getting older. I don’t feel the itch like I used to.”

“But isn’t it our job to help people?”

“Bullshit,” Dean says. 

“Really,” Sam says, and his voice is all skepticism.

“You know it’s bullshit. I don’t know, Sammy. I think you’re right. We hurt a lot of people, too, and I don’t, I mean…” Dean fumbles for what he wants to say. His shoulder’s throbbing, and he lets that wake him further, sharpen his thoughts. “I can’t do that anymore, man. I can’t keep hurting people. I can’t take the weight of it. And I can’t keep hurting you.”

Sam nods. His eyes are on the road, and he looks like he’s turning Dean’s words over. He’ll say something soon, and Dean will lose his window. But Dean is supposed to protect Sam, and somehow that all got twisted up so that every single thing he’s done to keep Sam safe has done nothing but fuck them both. 

“Dean—” Sam starts.

“I saw Gadreel,” Dean says. “In my dream.” 

Sam jerks as if he’s been slapped. The Impala swerves, and Dean shouts, “Watch it!” at the same time Sam asks, “What?” 

Sam gets control of himself and the car. His jaw clenches, and he grips the steering wheel tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He’s trying to school his expression, but he isn’t doing a good job of it—the corners of his mouth tugged down, his forehead creased—and he can’t keep his eyes on the road, just keeps looking at Dean sideways.

“And you’re sure it was him?” Sam says, after he’s silent for long enough that Dean thinks he might not say anything at all. 

“Yeah, Sam,” Dean says. “I’m sure.”

Sam nods. “He can’t find me,” he says eventually.

“No. He can’t.”

“Shit always finds us, Dean,” Sam says. 

“Not this time.”

Sam nods. He doesn’t look like he buys what Dean’s selling, but he nods anyway and tries to focus on the road again.

“Do you want to know what he said?” Dean says. 

“No,” Sam says. “I’m out. Or he’s out. He doesn’t get me anymore. I don’t give a shit what he said.”

“Okay,” Dean says.

They drive in silence for hours. The sun disappears, and the night spreads,, and the Ozarks seem a haunted place. The trees weep over the roads. They’re alive with shadows. An owl is hooting, low and insistent, hunting, and Dean spots a rangy coyote loping along the pavement. It darts into the woods when the Impala gets too close for its comfort. There’s a reason they spent so much time here as kids. Ghosts like places like this. Dean feels a bit like a ghost. He realizes he has for a long time. Just a ghost who stuck around for his own wake. 

“I don’t want to hunt anymore either,” Sam says. They’ve finally pulled up to the cabin, and he looks exhausted. Dean’s exhausted. 

“Okay,” Dean says. 

“I say we make a go of it here,” Sam says. He looks at Dean, his face shadowed in the half light. “You and me.”

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean says. 

They get out of the Impala, the doors creaking. In the night, somewhere out in the woods, their dog howls.


End file.
